<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>The Souls You Reap by ElvaDeath</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28286031">The Souls You Reap</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElvaDeath/pseuds/ElvaDeath'>ElvaDeath</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The World of Asano Gakushuu [7]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Assassination Classroom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>+ a special guest :), Angst, Asano Gakuhou's Bad Parenting, Asano Gakushuu Needs A Hug, Asano Gakushuu is Bad at Feelings, Asano Gakushuu-centric, Death, Drowning, Ghosts, I lied..., obviously, the death is all canon I swear, well mostly, when I promised a happier one...</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 23:27:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,301</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28286031</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElvaDeath/pseuds/ElvaDeath</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Where Gakushuu breathes in death, and finds it really changes nothing at all.</p><p>Until it does.</p><p>- E.D.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Asano Gakuhou &amp; Asano Gakushuu, Asano Gakuhou &amp; Ikeda Rikuto, Asano Gakushuu &amp; Ikeda Rikuto, Asano Gakushuu &amp; Sakakibara Ren</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The World of Asano Gakushuu [7]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1657669</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>136</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Souls You Reap</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I was hoping to get a sort of Christmas special in, but that doesn't look like it's going to happen. Instead, you get more Gakushuu angst! You're welcome.</p><p>I have many many projects all going on at once, one of them almost finished and ready to be released into the wider world, so I haven't just disappeared off the face of the planet. Case SC3E is on hold for now, but I will return to it. However, after writing this short thing, I'm so so tempted to try to continue it and explain a bit more as to what is going on, because I'm pretty sure it's confusing if it's left as is.</p><p>Anyway, enjoy!<br/>- E.D.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Asano Gakushuu breathes death.</p><p>His first breath he ever took was stolen from his mother. She lay there, dead and cold on the table, as he gave his first screaming cry to the world. His first breath was her last. That deadly cold frozen stale breath stayed with him, cloying up his lungs, infecting him with the stench of death no matter how many times his father tried to wash him. His first breath was death, and so his fate was sealed.</p><p>(Years and years later, he’ll say he misses the father he knew before all of the death. The truth is, he never actually knew that man. Before he had even laid eyes on Gakuhou Asano, his father had been stained by loss, and never quite recovered in the same way, even when he’d tried for Gakushuu.)</p><p>They recovered. Gakushuu had no idea that he carried with him death, so, as all children do, he laughed and played and grew in leaps and bounds. His father was a genius, a master in every skill, juggling his own cram school and his businesses and a toddler all in one go, with a kind smile on his face, and Gakushuu adored him from the top of his head down to his toes. He didn’t have many friends, but his father was all he needed.</p><p>Then there was Ikeda, the shining golden boy from his father’s cram school, and Gakushuu couldn’t get enough. They’d chuck a thing around, something called a bas-ket-bowl, and when he got it in the little hoop Ikeda would scoop him up and throw him in the air, letting him soar in the blue sky. He always came down giggling, staring with wide eyes at the beaming smile Ikeda gave him, squirming as his father rushed over to make sure he wasn't hurt. He wanted to be chucked again, so he could touch those fluffy clouds, but his father patted him on the head and carried him inside for a snack.</p><p>Ikeda was the brother he never had. Older, bigger, wiser. Gakushuu’s father adored them both, even if he could be a little too protective of Gakushuu, and Gakushuu could never have imagined a world in which he wasn’t playing with the bas-ket-bowl on a hot summer day with his two favourite favourite favourite people!</p><p>It doesn’t last.</p><p>That’s the thing about Gakushuu. He breathes death, both in and out. Out, out into the lungs of a poor kid named Ikeda, who wakes up screaming over his body in the river.</p><p>(But ghosts aren’t real, are they?)</p><p>He was five, and he was in the park. It had been a nice day. Blue sky, hot sun, and father had told him Ikeda would be coming around soon. He was excited. He hadn’t seen Ikeda in a while. </p><p>When the road is blocked by a crowd of people, he twists in his seat. He wants to go home. He’s hot, and hungry, and is going to kick the back of his father’s seat until he gets in the cool house with a plate of nice food. Gakushuu wriggles, his small fingers clinging to the bumper seat, and looks out to see the bridge ahead, cordoned off by police.</p><p>“Wait here, Gakushuu, I’ll have a little talk with them.” His father says, looking back with that perfect bright smile. The door opens, he steps out, the door shuts. Gakushuu slumps back, head resting against the window as he watches his father talk to the nice policeman by the yellow tape.</p><p>He thinks it’s silly that they use yellow. Yellow is the nice colour, the colour of sunflowers and bumblebees which buzz about the garden. Gakushuu likes sunflowers. His father likes sunflowers, but he doesn’t like the yellow tape because he’s staring at it with an expression that Gakushuu doesn’t like very much. Gakushuu doesn’t know what he’s doing. The policeman has wandered away, so his father can’t still be talking. He’s looking at the tape- No, now he’s looking past the tape, to where more police are taking photos of… a pair of shoes?</p><p>Gakushuu thinks that’s silly. They’re just a pair of shoes. Ikeda had told him the police would come and tell him off if he left his shoes everywhere, but Gakushuu had thought that was stupid and wrong. The police are for important things, like helping old ladies cross the street and stopping bad people. But they’re paying a lot of attention to the pair of shoes, so maybe Ikeda was right. Does that mean Gakushuu is going to get in trouble for leaving his shoes on the big chair in the sofa room?</p><p>His father still hasn’t moved. He’s just standing there, with that expression that makes something uncomfortable twitch in Gakushuu’s throat. Has his father fallen asleep? Meow does that sometimes, where she lies down and stares without doing anything, and Gakushuu has to stroke her a bit to make her look at him and move again. His father isn’t lying down. Should Gakushuu go wake him up? He should, shouldn’t he?</p><p>Squirming, he unclicks the little seatbelt and crawls into his father’s seat, where he can open the door. It’s heavy, but he pushes until it swings wide and he can jump down. He’s on the pavement, squeezing his way past these tall people, when his father finally moves. But it’s not towards Gakushuu. He moves forwards, ducking under the tape, brushing aside the police officer that comes to stop him.</p><p>Gakushuu doesn’t know what to do, so he runs on his too-small legs to get his father. The policeman almost grabs him, but he knows self-defense and chops the man in the neck. The scary policeman was trying to kidnap him! Self-defense! No comment, no comment, just like father told him.</p><p>Leaving the spluttering man choking out angry words, he scrambles over to his father. His arms wrap around his father’s leg, which is a good job, because when he follows his father’s line of sight he almost falls over.</p><p>Down there, floating in the water, is Ikeda.</p><p>He doesn’t look like Ikeda, though. He’s fat. His skin is too pale, too cold and grey. This can’t be Ikeda, but it is, because his father whispers his name and chokes back a funny noise that really isn’t funny at all. Actually, it’s scary. It’s really scary. Gakushuu doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like the noise, and he doesn’t like the policemen yelling at them, and he doesn’t like not-Ikeda floating down below them.</p><p>(Ikeda reaches out, and his hands go through Gakuhou. He screams. He cries. He bends down to a shivering little five-year-old Gakushuu and whispers to him, begs him, screams and screams and screams but no one is ever going to hear him ever again-)</p><p>Gakushuu shudders. The air is cold. He squeezes his eyes shut and breathes in</p><p>(Ikeda’s eyes widen as he breathes out, the cold deep in his bones vanishing along with the rest of him, turning into swirling mist that flies towards Gakushuu-)</p><p>and swallows, frost burning the insides of his throat. Ugh. Why was that breath so unpleasant? He breathes, and breathes, and then he realises that that breath was no colder than any of his other breaths. It’s fine. He’s used to breathing death anyway.</p><p>There is the second death of his life, his second breath.</p><p>The third happens so slowly that Gakushuu doesn’t even feel it when the cold sinks in and takes hold. His father stays alive, for the first few years or so, even when his life is draining out with every snide remark and every cruel rule he imposes on his new students. Gakushuu thinks they still love each other. </p><p>No, he knows they do. He doesn’t care that his father dumps all of his second-place trophies in the bin, or that the most he gets in the way of a congratulation is a satisfied nod and an extracted promise to keep it up. His father loves him, and that’s why he wants to be the best, so he can prove himself. He works so hard, all of the time, and it’s all worth it when his father looks at him with the echo of his former pride.</p><p>It’s when he’s thirteen, with two minions clinging to his side, that he realises he missed the whole thing. He was so caught up in clawing his way to be his father’s son that he’d never even noticed he no longer had a father at all.</p><p>He takes a shuddering breath, and gasps at how cold it is. It slides down his throat, swirling around his frozen lungs, and spreads yet another layer of numb emptiness over his heart.</p><p>He’s breathed in the remains of his father’s rotting soul, and now he breathes in his death.</p><p>By the time the fourth death comes around, he couldn’t really care less. It’s a teacher, the one from 3E, who used to badger Gakushuu so much. She’d hang around the gates, waiting for him to finish whatever meeting he’d had, and walk him half of the way home. Believe him, he’d never have asked her to. He didn’t even like her, at first. But she had a way of smiling that thawed out a piece of his heart, and she brought him coffee even as she nagged him on his sleeping habits. Not that he gave those out voluntarily, either.</p><p>So when she dies, he decides to go to her funeral. Lab accident. She’d told him a little about her work there, although he’d gathered that it was supposed to be a secret. She’d even gone so far as to tell him she had a crush on one of the workers in the place, as she was trying to get him to open up about his own love life. It hadn’t worked, since he’d never had one, obviously. </p><p>Anyway, he goes to the funeral. He watches her get lowered into the ground, and breathes in that familiar ashy taste of death. He remembers her smile. He hates her for it. She melted his heart, just a little, just enough to make it hurt when she eventually froze it over so much more hard and bitter than before.</p><p>Her death settles down over him, coated on the inside of his lungs.</p><p>He finds it remarkable he hasn’t rotted away from all of this death he breathes. He can feel it inside of him, like dust, drying out his throat and covering every emotion in a pile of ash so thick he can’t recognise them. He’s fifteen, dead in an almost literal sense on the inside. Everyone knows it. They still believe his smiles, though.</p><p>That’s when the stray cat he pets every morning dies, and when Ren buys him that bracelet, and when the moon explodes, and when he becomes Student Council President. He can’t distinguish what is important, anymore. Everything dies eventually, why should he care?</p><p>He finds the secret of Class 3E. Octopus creature, government conspiracy,children with weapons, everything that should make him panic. Everything that only further reinforces that nothing matters.</p><p>An octopus teaches up on the hill, and yet the principal is still hyper focused on repressing the idiots. The government is giving 15-year-olds guns, and Nat still bakes his terrible food. There is an actual assassin wandering about the building, and yet everything is the same as it always was. If these major things can happen and yet not affect anything at all, why should anything anyone ever does affect anything else?</p><p>Gakushuu carries on.</p><p>He spots a flower seller.</p><p>If he had accepted Ren’s lift home, he wouldn’t have even seen him. If he had not just breathed in the death of Ren’s pet, Claws, maybe he wouldn’t have recognised the man for who he was. But this is the way the die (hah) lie, so the second he glances at the perfectly normal man, he can smell the stench of death on him like a beacon.</p><p>“Excuse me.”</p><p>The flower seller turns, death leaking from every gap in his smile. “Ah, young man! Would you like to buy some flowers?”</p><p>“You stink of it, you know.” What’s the use in putting up his usual facade? This man will understand him. If he doesn’t take one look at Gakushuu’s corpse face and instantly recognise it, then he’s a waste of time.</p><p>“I’m sorry, what do you…?” The man trails off, eyes narrowing. Gradually, he drops his cheery smile, settling for a dangerously sharp smirk. “Ah, I see. New to the game, are we?”</p><p>“For about my entire life, sure.”</p><p>The man rolls his eyes, turning away and starting to pack up the stand. “Aren’t you the cocky one? Get your shit, kid, I’ll take you.”</p><p>“Where?”</p><p>The man turns hard amber eyes on him, suddenly serious. “You want to take your chances without me? You’ll rot away in the life you have now. What do you have to lose?”</p><p>Nothing. He might feel lingering guilt for leaving Ren like this, but it’ll fade. “My name’s Asano Gakushuu.”</p><p>“Pick a new one, kid. You won’t need the old one where you’re going.” The man finishes packing up, walking to the driver’s seat without waiting to see if Gakushuu will follow.</p><p>He does anyway. He doesn’t care if this man cares. In fact, it’s all the better if he doesn’t. The only thing Gakushuu wants is someone just like him.</p><p>The man starts the engine, and they set off. A few turned corners, and Gakushuu no longer has any idea where he is. </p><p>“You want my name?”</p><p>Gakushuu nods. The silver-haired man glances at him with a harmless smile, perfectly innocent except for the ashy taste of death around him.</p><p>“I’m the Reaper.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Voting time!</p><p>Should I:</p><p>a) Focus on finishing the secret project I have in the wings</p><p>b) Carry on SC3E</p><p>c) Make more chapters of this</p><p>d) Make more one-shots</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>